Immigration Bill Fails in U.S. Senate

The Senate sidetracked sweeping immigration legislation Friday amid partisan recriminations, leaving in doubt prospects for passage of a measure that offered the hope of citizenship to millions of men, women and children living in the United States illegally.

The bill gained only 38 votes on a key procedural test, far short of the 60 needed to advance.

The vote marked a turnabout from Thursday, when the Senate’s two leaders had both hailed a last-minute compromise as a breakthrough in the campaign to enact the most far-reaching changes in immigration law in two decades.

But Republicans soon accused Democrats of trying to squelch their amendments, while Democrats accused the GOP of trying to kill their own bill by filibuster.

“It’s not gone forward because there’s a political advantage for Democrats not to have an immigration bill,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid countered, “The amendments were being offered by people who didn’t want the bill.”

The vote fell nearly along party lines, with Democrats in favor of advancing the bill and Republicans opposed.

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So let me make sure I understand – Democrats voted to advance the bill, Republicans voted (in effect) to table it, and Arlen Specter claims that вЂњItвЂ™s not gone forward because thereвЂ™s a political advantage for Democrats not to have an immigration bill.вЂќ Head . . . Exploding.

There were – I think I heard correctly – about 400 amendments to this bill, all offered up by people who didn’t want it. You can guess based on who controls the schedule who might have been introducing those amendments.

It’s not like stopping the bill now would be much different than passing it today; the House “detain, deport, and deFence” bill collided so horribly with the Senate bill nothing would have been done about the situation anyway. This saves a lot of time; Democrats can bring it up again with Bush’s support after the elections this year…

Well, I won’t say you’re wrong on that one, BMR. The motion to table probably took half-a-second once the vote on cloture failed.

Neither the House nor Senate bills really did an adequate job of addressing the issues anyway, IMHO. Taking an issue-by-issue approach might get us something by the end of the year, but these omnibus bills aren’t going to make it.

The failure of the Senate’s amnesty bill is not unexpected. For the Ted Kennedy wing of the GOP, it was an expedient means of running away from a contentious split with the base. But Senate RINOs who supported amnesty for the “undocumented” illegal aliens should take heed – the forsaking of basic principles like rule of law will not soon be forgotten. The same caution applies to the closeted amnesty supporters in the House (are you listening Bob Beauprez?).